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President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he will "immediately" request a new hearing from the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the birthright citizenship case, just days after the high court ruled against him.
“I will request a new hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States, IMMEDIATELY. This judicial error will destroy the United States if they do not change their absolutely insane decision,” wrote the leader on Truth Social, where he also described the ruling as “absolute madness.”
The ruling that Trump seeks to overturn was issued on June 30 in the case Trump v. Barbara, with a vote of 6 to 3, reaffirming that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of the immigration status of their parents.
The President of the Court, John Roberts, drafted the majority opinion with the support of both conservative and liberal justices.
An extraordinarily rare resource
The request for a new hearing is an infrequent mechanism in the modern jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
In order to succeed, it would require five out of the nine judges to vote in favor of the reconsideration, a very difficult threshold to reach given that the original majority was six votes.
Furthermore, the application must be submitted within 25 days following the issuance of the ruling, which establishes a tight deadline for the administration.
The conservative fracture that encourages Trump
Although Trump lost the case, the division within the conservative bloc gives him political leverage to continue applying pressure.
The three dissenting votes belonged to judges Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Alito described the ruling as an "error" and argued that it "creates a powerful incentive to enter or remain illegally in this country."
Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion of 91 pages in which he stated that the decision "devalues" citizenship as understood by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh voted with the majority, but based his opinion on a violation of immigration laws from 1940 and 1952, rather than on the Constitution, leaving a legislative door open.
This ruling represents the third significant judicial defeat for Trump before the Supreme Court in recent months, following the February 2026 decision that struck down his tariffs and the one that prevented him from dismissing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve.
The Legislative Bet and Its Obstacles
At the same time, Trump is pushing an offensive in Congress to eliminate birthright citizenship through ordinary legislation.
"No need for a lengthy and complicated constitutional amendment. Congress should start WORKING TODAY to end the costly and unjust birthright citizenship!" he wrote on Truth Social.
However, legal experts warn that amending the 14th Amendment would require a constitutional reform and 60 votes in the Senate, a threshold deemed very unlikely in the current Congress.
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, expressed support but acknowledged his own limitations: "Without a doubt, the time has come to do everything possible. I don't know what that is," he stated to CNN.
The argument of "birth tourism"
Trump justified his offensive by pointing out billboards in South Texas advertising birthing packages for about 4,000 dollars, branding it a "scam." "AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP IS NOT FOR SALE!" he wrote.
The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, ordered an investigation on Monday into Mission Regional Medical Center for allegedly profiting from that practice.
However, according to the Pew Research Center, birth tourism is statistically marginal: between 2016 and 2024, there were only 80,500 cases, representing 0.24% of the total births during that period.
The administration is also considering banning the entry of foreign pregnant women as an additional measure, although experts warn that this approach faces significant constitutional challenges.
The Cuban-American Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar distanced herself from Trump and supported the ruling: "The Constitution is clear, and we must always respect the rule of law," she wrote on X.
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